15,000 Volts

In what she calls “high voltage wood erosion,” NYC artist Melanie Hoff uses electrical currents to create seemingly supernatural patterns in pieces of plywood. Hoff, a 23-year-old sculpture major at Pratt Institute, documented her electrified art experiments in “15,000 Volts,” a short video that shows the process in stunning time-lapse. Made as part of her senior thesis project, the clip was shot over the course of about 10 hours in a Brooklyn metal shop.

“The grain of the wood influences the pattern and direction,” Hoff says. “The layers of veneer and the glue that holds them together causes the growth to progress much slower than in non-plywood.”